Subject: [core] review of draft-ietf-core-link-format

From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:26:02 -0700

Herewith some comments on draft-ietf-core-link-format...

Issues...

1. We define link as:

      Also called "typed links" in RFC5988.  A link is a typed
      connection between two resources identified by URIs.  Made up of a
      context URI, a link relation type, a target URI, and optional
      target attributes.

However, RFC 5988 calls them IRIs, not URIs. Can these in fact be IRIs?
What exactly is the internationalization story here?

2. Have we requested a review of the "application/link-format" media
type on the [email-masked] list, per RFC 4288? I don't see a
message about it in the archives, but I know that the archives might not
be fully reliable.

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-types/current/maillist.html

3. Have we requested a review of the "core" well-known URL on the
[email-masked] list, per RFC 5785? I don't see a message
about it in the archives:

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/wellknown-uri-review/current/maillist.html

4. Have we requested a review of the "hosts" link relation type on the
[email-masked] list, per RFC 5988? I don't see a message about
it in the archives:

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/link-relations/current/maillist.html

5. It seems that the request URI can contain somewhat sensitive
information (e.g., a filter). How exactly is the request protected? Does
this need to be specified more clearly in Section 6?

Nits...

It's "media type", not "MIME type".

Please always include /.well-known/core in quotes within running text.
There are some bad line breaks, so "/.well-known/core" is more readable.

Please cite RFC 5785 on first mention of well-known URI.

We say:

   As in [RFC5988], multiple link
   descriptions are separated by commas.  Note that commas can also
   occur in quoted strings and URIs but do not end a description.

Mightn't that cause confusion?

Some examples would help in Section 2.1 ("Target and context URIs") and
elsewhere.

"When attributes are compared, they MUST be compared as strings." Do you
mean byte-for-byte comparison, or something else?

The URN examples are far-fetched. For example "urn:myapp:sensor" would
never be assigned. See RFC 3406.

The "Big" thing in Section 3.3 is kind of hacky. :)

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2011 23:50:22 +0100

> Mightn't that cause confusion?

Yes, that's why it is a good idea to call this out explicitly.
So, when you parse this stuff, you want to skip the <URL> and "quoted" segments and only look for commas outside them.
But that can be done with a very simple state machine.
(At least we no longer have the comma-separated values for the ct= attribute.)

Grüße, Carsten